S.O.S. for elephants

A Victorian depiction of war elephants attacking at the Battle of the Hydaspes River. There is uncertainty as to when elephant warfare first began. The Rigveda , codified in the era from c. Elephant and driver, most likely from the Mughal Emperor’s stable with a hunting howdah, including pistol, bows and a rifle By the time Alexander reached the borders of India five years later, he had a substantial number of elephants under his own command. When it came to defeating Porus , who ruled in what is now Punjab, Pakistan , Alexander found himself facing a considerable force of between 85 and war elephants [11] [12] at the Battle of the Hydaspes. Preferring stealth and mobility to sheer force, Alexander manoeuvered and engaged with just his infantry and cavalry, ultimately defeating Porus’ forces, including his elephant corps, albeit at some cost. Porus for his part placed his elephants individually, at long intervals from each other, a short distance in front of his main infantry line, in order to scare off Macedonian cavalry attacks and aid his own infantry in their struggle against the phalanx. The elephants caused many losses with their tusks fitted with iron spikes or by lifting the enemies with their trunks and trampling them. The panicked and wounded elephants turned on the Indians themselves, the mahouts were armed with poisoned rods to kill the beasts but were slain by javelins and archers. Such a force was many times larger than the number of elephants employed by the Persians and Greeks, which probably discouraged Alexander’s army and effectively halted their advance into India.

Hellenistic age

Abstract The world’s biodiversity is shared by countries that are increasingly recognizing the need for effective responses to human influence and climate change impacts through coordinated management and protection of nature beyond national borders. The case of elephants, a highly mobile and widely distributed mammal that plays crucial ecological and economic roles in savanna and forest landscapes, exemplifies the need for approaches to conservation that transcend geopolitical frontiers.

Transboundary cooperation can bring substantial conservation and economic benefits but also presents challenges for policy, governance, and diplomacy. While some multilateral environmental agreements have explicitly incorporated transboundary commitments into their frameworks, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora CITES continues to focus on the sovereignty of individual nations in regulating trade of wildlife.

African elephants could go extinct within 12 years, data from a new survey shows. The Denver Post reports that anti-trafficking officials from 12 African nations confirmed the grim outlook for the.

Four elephants guarded his tent, and shortly after his death his associate Ptolemy issued coins showing Alexander in the elephant headdress that became a royal emblem also in the Hellenized East. Aristotle depended on first-hand information for his account of elephants, but like most Westerners he believed the animals live for two hundred years. Roman scouts in the royal Syrian parks shortly before the last of the Seleucids fell to Rome had orders to hamstring every elephant they could capture, and while elephants performed in the circuses of Rome, Shapur ‘s war elephants in the mid-4th century numbered in the hundreds Fox p Elephants largely disappeared from Europe after the Roman Empire.

As exotic and expensive animals, they were exchanged as presents between European rulers, who exhibited them as luxury pets, beginning with Harun ar-Rashid ‘s gift of an elephant to Charlemagne. Examples[ edit ] Historical accounts of elephants in Europe include: The first historically recorded elephant in northern Europe, the animal brought by emperor Claudius during the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43 to the British capital of Colchester.

At least one elephant skeleton with flint weapons that has been found in England was initially misidentified as this elephant, but later dating proved it to be a mammoth skeleton from the Stone Age. The animal died in , of pneumonia.

Of the four living in the Quaker City when the zoo reluctantly decided to send them away in , two are dead and the other two, friends for decades, have been torn apart. What brings Philly’s former elephants into the center ring, so to speak, was the recent decision by Ringling Bros. Feld Entertainment which owns the circus CEO Kenneth Feld acknowledged this follows “shifting consumer preferences,” which means more people understand that a traveling circus – any circus, really – offers a life of misery, and sometimes pain, to the pachyderms.

Marianne Bessey, who heads Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants, called the Feld decision “fantastic,” but said “we will still continue to protest until every animal is gone from the circus.

Watch video · Ivory from recently slaughtered elephants is being illegally sold across Europe, fuelling the extinction crisis, a study has found. New radiocarbon-dating tests proved that ivory items bought in.

William Delaney Certified Educator On one page of the story the American says, not once but three times, that Jig doesn’t have to go through with the operation if she doesn’t want to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to. On one page of the story the American says, not once but three times, that Jig doesn’t have to go through with the operation if she doesn’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.

He obviously, though reluctantly, is saying that he is willing to support her and the baby, which seems to mean that he would give up the nomadic, irresponsible life they have been leading, get a job, and become the breadwinner. She wouldn’t consider having the baby unless they were married. Maybe young women have different views now, but they didn’t in the ‘s.

Since he is an American, he would very likely have to move back to America. He doesn’t say that they would get married, and the fact that neither of them mentions marriage makes me think they are married already.

War Elephants

Share 65 shares To do this, we enlisted the help of three African elephants at ‘Adventures With Elephants’ — an educational tourism facility focused on raising awareness about conservation. Using reward-based training techniques, we trained the elephants to indicate whenever they could smell TNT among a lineup of blank, non-smelly samples initially and then later, highly volatile distractor odours. Samples were individual filter papers loaded with trace amounts of one of the following odours: TNT; petroleum; acetone; bleach; detergent; tea; or nothing at all blanks.

These filter papers, or samples, were placed individually into a bucket, and sample buckets eight in total were placed 6 metres apart, in a straight line. The elephants were trained to walk along the line and investigate each bucket, raising their front leg and waving it over the selected bucket whenever they thought they could smell TNT.

Episodes Who’s killing the elephants? A look at how DNA sampling can help put an end to the ivory trail. Plus, California’s starving sea lions. While the seizure was the biggest in the country’s history, the perpetrators of the crime were never caught. To better equip law enforcement entities, a group of scientists in the United States are developing innovative tools to identify trends in the international ivory trade.

They are these keystone species where if you take one out, it has this huge ripple effect on all these other species. Elephants are true keystone species.

African elephants could go extinct within 12 years

At India’s first hospital for elephants, which opened its doors last week in Mathura, year-old Asha placed her left foreleg on a stool for a doctor to tend to an injury while visitors filmed it all on their mobile phones. Hundreds of elephants are held in harmful captivity in India India’s elephant population dropped to 27, in from around 30, in The hospital is also serving as a tourist attraction Opened on Friday, the hospital is spread over 1 square kilometre and is designed to treat injured, sick or geriatric elephants.

The new Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Centre in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh boasts facilities including wireless digital X-Ray, thermal imaging, ultrasonography, tranquilisation devices and quarantine facilities. Despite being a cultural and religious symbol in India, elephants are often ill-treated in captivity.

Anushree Fadnavis While elephants are revered as a cultural and religious symbol in India, they are also ill-treated by their unschooled mahouts and often fall victim to electrocution, poaching, train accidents and poisoning, animal rights activists say.

Elephants are people too (or soon could be) which produces Ringling Bros. circuses, was fined $, for AWA violations dating back to Last month, the self-anointed “Greatest Show on Earth” announced that it would be phasing out elephant acts, citing a “mood shift” among fans. But four of his fellow elephants died.

The excavations also turned up ancient structures. Today the square is a busy crossroad for traffic and tourists. Continue reading the main story Photo On display at the San Giovanni station, clockwise from top left: Credit Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times Another significant find was a military barracks from the second century, found during the construction of the Amba Aradam station, which is expected to open in They formed part of a large structure, though the full size of the barracks is unknown.

Credit Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times At the San Giovanni station, which is expected to open early next year, archaeologists found bits of ancient capitals, decorative marble elements, petrified peach pits from ancient Persian cuttings and 16th-century terra-cotta plates from a nearby hospital. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Some of these artifacts have been put on exhibit at the station, the first to showcase its buried past with display cases, videos and tall panels providing a fast-track historical journey from prehistoric to modern times, with a focus on the ancient republican and imperial city.

Credit Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times When the station was opened to the public for one day last April, the response was overwhelming, a sign that Romans are keen to rediscover their past.

Phuket Elephants

Cerebral cortex[ edit ] The elephant both Asian and African has a very large and highly complex neocortex , a trait also shared by humans , other apes and certain dolphin species. Asian elephants have the greatest volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing of all existing land animals. Elephants have a volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing that exceeds that of any primate species, with one study suggesting elephants be placed in the category of great apes in terms of cognitive abilities for tool use and tool making.

This is thought to be possibly why elephants suffer from psychological flashbacks and the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD.

But, that did not stop Ellen DeGeneres, an avid animal lover, from taking a stance to protect elephants across the world. Thus the #BeKindToElephants campaign was born and through the campaign, Ellen promised to donate money to the nonprofit organization, The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

Evolutionary medicine may provide insights into human physiology and pathophysiology, including tumor biology. The African and Asian elephant genomes were analyzed for potential mechanisms of cancer resistance. Peripheral blood lymphocytes from elephants, healthy human controls, and patients with LFS were tested in vitro in the laboratory for DNA damage response. Human samples were collected at the University of Utah between June and July The elephant genome was investigated for alterations in cancer-related genes.

The mechanisms that prevent accumulation of genetic damage and subsequent uncontrolled proliferation of somatic cells in multicellular organisms remain poorly understood. A greater number of cells and cell divisions increases the chance of accumulating mutations resulting in malignant transformation.

Elephantinely

Providing a platform where millions of users can upload and watch videos of every imaginable description has proven to be one of the most dynamic innovations in the history of the internet. Sadly, no one was willing to make use of the service and the concept failed. An internet phenomenon was born. On April 23rd , the first ever publicly viewable YouTube video was posted.

From there, YouTube exploded and the finances began rolling in.

Radiocarbon dating measures the continuous decay of the radioactive isotope of carbon, 14C, in order to determine when an animal died. Elephant poaching and ivory trafficking impacts conservation efforts, as well as threatening social and economic security in many parts of central and eastern Africa.

Below are some quick tips on how to prevent the butterflies in your tummy, from morphing into a sabotaging date-wrecking herd of elephants, rampaging around in your innards. Be prepared Like the scouts, being prepared for all eventualities is key. Why should it be any different with a prospective lover? Brainstorm potential topics of conversation. These topics are potential date-busters! Self-care Pamper yourself so you feel at your very best. Nor should you wear a dress which is so frigging short, your prospect can see your tonsils.

Nonhuman Rights Groups: Elephants Are People Too

Transcript Since that decision in November, however, the D. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Obama administration had acted improperly in implementing its ban. That late December ruling , which addressed a lawsuit brought by Safari Club International and the National Rifle Association, found that the administration did not sufficiently observe the rules around creating a new regulation, such as inviting public comment. The Fish and Wildlife Service directly cited the court ruling in its letter, saying that as a result it was withdrawing several previous Endangered Species Act findings dating back to

Define elephantine. elephantine synonyms, elephantine pronunciation, elephantine translation, English dictionary definition of elephantine. A series of Jewish papyrus documents dating from the 5th century bc were discovered at Elephantine in the early s. (Zoology) denoting, relating to, or characteristic of an elephant or elephants.

Sunday 8 December Elephants drink between and litres a day on average. Elephants love to eat peanuts Myth. Peanuts, on the other hand, are tiny. Although, unlike elephants, hippos and rhinos can have all four feet off the ground at the same time when they run. Elephants have excellent hearing, but African elephants can also detect rumbles in the ground with sensory cells in their feet. The elephant will be able to tell where the sound is coming from by comparing the timing of the signals.

The rock hyrax is a small, furry, rat-like mammal that lives in rocky landscapes across sub-Saharan Africa and along the coast of the Arab peninsula.